E-Manifest: Partnering to Build a 21st Century Solution for Hazardous Waste Tracking

Last year, I announced that we were embarking on the development of e-Manifest, to upgrade the current paper-based system of tracking hazardous waste to an electronic one, streamlining and greatly reducing the millions of paper manifests produced each year. E-Manifest will save industry an estimated $75 million per year, improve inspection and enforcement by EPA and the states, and improve public safety by providing timely and better quality information on hazardous waste transport to emergency responders.

Hazardous waste generated in the United States must be tracked from “cradle to grave” to ensure it is handled, shipped, and disposed of in a safe and environmentally responsible manner.

We’ve made significant progress over the last year working with the states, industry, and other stakeholders on the development of e-Manifest.

We held a series of extensive technical meetings to discuss key issues, including:

• Current industry and state operations and information technology (IT) systems that support manifests.
• Industry and state expectations and requirements for interacting with e-Manifest.
• State and industry data access needs and reports available from the e-Manifest system.

This work is essential to designing, building and ultimately deploying the national system, and the agency will soon procure appropriate vendors to achieve these goals. We will be in close contact with users and other stakeholders to pilot and test the system every step of the way as we proceed.

On February 18, 2015 we asked for nominations from individuals interested in service on this e-Manifest Board, ensuring there is representation from states, industry, and IT professionals. View the Federal Register Notice for more information.

Another important step needed before the e-Manifest program can be fully implemented is to establish the initial fee structure for users of the system. We are working closely with states and industry stakeholders, and anticipate the proposed rule establishing the fee model for the system will be ready for public comment by May of 2016.